


Fight or Flight

by Killtheselights



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Spy Rey (Star Wars), Supreme Leader Kylo Ren
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-22
Updated: 2018-11-22
Packaged: 2019-08-27 12:24:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16702498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Killtheselights/pseuds/Killtheselights
Summary: Supreme Leader Kylo Ren takes pleasure from very little. However, tonight, his secret hobby has been interrupted by a harrowing group of guests: the First Order Flight Academy, its grating Headmistress, and a certain Jedi who is not speaking to him and definitely is not supposed to be here...Canonverse, Post-TLJ. Reydar with a twist.





	Fight or Flight

**Author's Note:**

> This was his secret.

As Supreme Leader, he was not granted many, but this was the best he could manage: moments stolen alone in an empty hangar bay with his Silencer.

Kylo had scraped together enough of a disguise that he would slip into on some of those many nights (“night” in the general sense that this was this particular Star Destroyer’s calibrated nocturnal setting, anyway) he couldn’t sleep. He would disappear from his quarters while everyone else was asleep or otherwise occupied and, looking as nondescript as he pleased, just exist among the ‘troopers or officers still roaming the corridors, making sure the First Order ran while everyone else was off resting. He would roam various decks and floors that as Supreme Leader he could not enter without causing a major disruption. He would even sneak into the mess for a caf. He'd never been in there until he'd found that awful wig on its way to the garbage chute. It was a bit messy but it was clean, which he believed was the most important part.

He often struggled to keep his long, unruly hair hidden by the short wig and he didn't bother to disguise his scar, but even with these failings, no one gave him more than a sideways glance, anyway. He was not the menacing specter in black everyone knew to avoid. He was just another feckless crew member, same as anyone.

He did not talk to anyone on these excursions, but that was some of the fun, wasn’t it? Just blending in. Observing. Being someone else for a change. Roaming. Not being needed by everyone and their kriffing commander. When he was tired of wandering, he would slip away to the often completely empty TIE landing bay, and enter the release code for his Silencer, and get to work.

He had so few real possessions in the galaxy. His clothes were a necessity. His lightsaber a tool.

She was _his._ And every chance he could to steal away and work on her, he would.

He couldn’t ask for better meditation. He’d taken careful notes of all the alterations he’d made to her, which he kept in a journal tucked in a compartment in the cockpit. He’d slip into the maintenance bay, pick up whatever parts he needed, log them under his access code, and work patiently for hours until he felt the need to return to his quarters, pretending to sleep until he was disturbed by his first morning visitors.

But for now, he was alone, and that was the way he liked it.

The only thing was that the wig never felt comfortable on his head, and the goggles he donned for the purposes of disguise were a little too bulky and awkward to actually prove advantageous when he was under the ship, as he was now. But he forgot these inconveniences quickly. He never felt more comfortable than when he was reclining on a creeper, toying with the wiring on his ship, the force acting like extra fingers to help him manipulate the machinery, his actual fingers, stained with grease and dirt, scribbling away notes in his journal.

This was perhaps the closest he came to true joy.

And then he heard the roar of engines. He jerked his head, barely avoiding cracking his head on the open access panel, but enough to glimpse a transport coming in.

 _At this time of night?_   

(“Night,” again, being a relative concept).

He sighed, then relaxed back against the creeper and scooted back underneath the Silencer. Probably nothing to worry about. If it was urgent, he would surely hear the alarm being raised. Probably.

However, moments later, he felt that the Force was no longer behaving quite right. It was prickly, staticy, and while he tried to control it again, he heard a voice from the shuttle.  
  
This time, he did crack his head squarely on the access panel, and he bit his bottom lip to stifle the angry swear threatening to erupt from him.

No. Not _her._

“You will have plenty of time to put your things away in the barracks later!” an irate female voice shrieked. “You have the honor of flying TIE fighters on a ship currently occupied by the Supreme Leader himself! Have you no--”  He knew that clipped accent anywhere. He flattened himself back on the creeper.  
  
Not the Headmistress.

Commander Caro Sayre was domineering, controlling, coarse. He had the misfortune to have met her early in his career with the First Order when he was just Snoke’s Little Project and was forced to shadow with the Flight Academy when the school was in its infancy. She cared little for Kylo then, when he was just a grim, mopey punk sticking his nose in the TIE Fighters and getting underfoot while she was trying to teach. She had even less love for him now that he was Supreme Leader, and he always tried to deputize any and all interactions with her to a lesser officer.

But what was perhaps the worst thing about her was although she had a decade or so on him, Kylo could tell there was something lovely about her, or had been once. Despite her icy shrillness, she could be considered pretty, as pretty as she was deadly, fierce, and commanding. Yet she was perhaps the only woman in the galaxy who could make even Hux run with fear, and Kylo knew he wouldn’t be far behind.

The Headmistress of the First Order Pilot Academy liked very few things, but she hated Kylo as much as she loved the First Order. She found something lacking about the Supreme Leader. And she had told him. To his face.

In front of his officers.

This would normally be the cause for the Supreme Leader to order the execution of an underling, but Kylo simply couldn’t allow that. The woman was a stunning pilot, crafty and certain. And she was teaching the next generation of First Order’s fleet commanders. He simply couldn’t deprive the galaxy of her talents.

But that didn’t mean he was in any rush to see her again.

He quickly and silently slid the creeper out from under the small craft and slowly began to unfold himself. He knew he had to shut the access hatch of the Silencer before sending the ship away again into storage, but he was afraid of drawing any attention to himself, so he would have to wait it out until the group moved on. As it was, he was obscured by several other TIEs that had been abandoned mid-repair, the large, dark wings flanking Kylo and keeping him fairly hidden. He just couldn’t make any more noise.

They would be moving soon, he thought, the Force buzzing in his head. He just needed to wait until they had moved on.

He clambered over to the mat where he left his roll of tools and extra parts, trying to get a glimpse of the crowd size.

What were they even doing there? he wondered, leaning this way and that to get a peek of the mass of heads in front of Sayre. Why didn’t he know they were coming?  
  
He probably had been told, he later realized, but given the fact he was incredibly sleep-deprived and—the perhaps more pressing reason—he simply did not care, he hadn’t deemed this particular fact important to remember.

He knelt down on the mat to begin putting away his tools. As he cursed that damn flight academy for always getting in the way (they had never before obstructed his activities, but this was one of the only things he truly cared about, damn it), his eyes continued to dart around the crowd. His best guess was that there were no more than forty students.

The group began to move closer as the Headmistress droned on about the various policies that controlled the landing and docking of ships on a Star Destroyer. Ben knew these, of course, but he found himself very interested when he noticed a brown-haired student, a young woman, at the very back of the pack.

In his shock, he dropped a wrench. The sound clattered through the empty hangar. The Headmistress stopped her incessant droning.

The small woman turned her head directly to face him, and it was like a tight wire in the Force had suddenly snapped as her eyes met his. His pulse instantly began to pound in his ears.

_Rey?_

“I’ll check it out, Commander,” Rey said, and she darted over to the Silencer.

Kylo’s brain was racing as she approached him. Her brow was furrowed. His probably was, too, though he couldn’t tell; the wig had slipped forward again.

Suddenly she was face to face with him, and before he could speak, she blurted out in a harsh whisper, “What are _you_ doing here?”

Their relationship (or whatever one could call the forced connection between them that constantly jumped between friendly and hostile) had not been particularly amicable since the battle on Crait; for months, every time the Force connected them, Rey would try to see if any weapons would allow her to take a shot at him. Perhaps their ability to touch hands through the galaxy had emboldened her rage, a truth which he liked to remind her was not very proper for a Jedi, and one that always got him another attempted jab from her staff. She was lethal with that thing, but it always managed to pass through him.

The last time they had connected several weeks prior, however, it seemed that perhaps that fire was out. Kylo was surprised to find that Rey had no desire to attack him, and, in fact, barely even acknowledged him. She merely sat in lotus position, appearing to focus on meditation. He clothing seemed a bit different. He assumed it had been sleepwear.

Now, as his eyes focused on her through his chunky First Order-issued repair goggles, he realized she had been wearing the ugly green uniform of the maintenace techs and the First Order Flight Academy; the same worksuit as him.

Eventually, he found a few words. They were not especially good ones.

“Wait, _what?_ ” he hissed back. The Force felt like a string instrument: it produced a familiar tune, he could feel the chords being plucked, but there was something not quite right. The melody was off somehow.

Was it his frustration or Rey’s causing the discord?

Regardless, he felt suddenly exposed to the girl, who, for the first time in his memories of her, towered over his crouched form. The disguise was worthless with the Force practically forming a tractor beam from her to him, and he knew he was too stunned to reign in the thoughts that were bound to be buzzing around him.  
  
Rey pressed her face in closer to his. “Isn’t the Supreme Leader supposed to be somewhere else? Pacing in his chambers? Plotting to destroy small mining worlds? Plucking the wings off Toydarians for fun?” she whispered, mock amusement in her tone. “You’re not supposed to be down here. And what's with that stupid disguise? It's awfully transparent. What if you got caught?”

“ _Me_?” he asked, his voice suddenly far louder than he had anticipated. “If I got..I’m not going to get caught, I’m not—Rey, are you a spy?”

“Yes,” she whispered with exasperation, the Force suddenly relaxing around them. “I registered for the flight academy under false pretenses. I’ve been undetected for several weeks. I think I’m doing a pretty good job.”

“You are telling me that you’re a spy,” he repeated slowly.

“Yes, that’s what I said.”

“But you are TELLING me you’re a spy. You’re not a good spy if you’re telling me you are one.”

“I guess when you put it that way, it does sound pretty bad,” she acknowledged with a cocky smile that made his stomach leap. “But I haven’t been figured out so far. Is this your ship?”

“I’ve figured you out, and yes, yes it is, thank—”

She turned her back to him and ran a hand along the sharp wing. “This is a TIE Silencer, right? The only one of the current line?”  
  
“Yes, it is, but…” he found himself stumbling over words. His wig suddenly felt too hot. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

“And I’m pretty sure neither are you,” she snapped, turning back to him. “But here we are. And you’re not going to tell anyone.”

“And what makes you so sure of that? You’re one of the First Order’s most wanted! You just stroll onto a Star Destroyer and you think that I’m going to—”

“What is taking so long?” A clipped voice interrupted his tirade. It was coming close. “Did you find the source of the sound, or can we resume our lesson?”

Kylo’s face or the Force or some combination of the two must have registered his horror, because in another second, Rey’s smile grew wider, feral and mocking.

“Because of her.”

“What?”

“Oh, I know you two are best pals, so I can tell her at any moment, _my goodness, it was the Supreme Leader who made that noise_ , _everyone look_! And then this mission goes from routine to fun in a matter of moments,” Rey whispered, words pouring out of her mouth rapidly, face alight with wicked joy. “So you’re coming with me, or else I’ll reveal your secret, and trust me, yours is a little harder to hide than mine.” She tapped her finger to her temple. His wig was slipping again; he could feel it.

Caro was drawing closer. Rey grabbed his arm and yanked him to his feet with surprising strength, just as the commander approached the nook where the Silencer was hidden.

“Apologies, commander. It appears a...a belt slipped off a workbench. It was nothing,” Rey babbled, standing at attention.

“Then it shall remain nothing. Get back with the others,” Caro barked, and then turned back to the group. While she strode back, Rey yanked Kylo’s arm, pulling him out of the shadows of the Silencer.

 _NO,_ he mouthed at her.

 _YES,_ she mouthed back with uncommon enthusiasm.

He shook his head aggressively. She just yanked harder, and within moments, Kylo found himself standing at the back of a pack of the galaxy’s most promising pilots, listening to a lecture on TIE maintenance, Rey gripping his hand in a vice between them.

**Author's Note:**

> Just hoping to have some talk with some regular folks.


End file.
